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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   32965 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Explaining fucking econ 101 to the hoi polloi seems like an entirely appropriate thing to do in an environment where the Leaders of the Free World are attempting to invoke various mumbo-jumbo and/or voodoo to explain why their pumping of the money supply while simultaneously outlawing demand for the produce of about half of the economy is totally not responsible for the inflation we've all been experiencing?

I agree with you, jkf

At the risk of being rude, I kinda wonder if 100P is thinking about things in terms of status games in a way that doesn't make sense.

The majority of people don't understand economics and finance and wouldn't be able to if you tried.

I really, really wish I was wrong about that. But when you have a practicing medical doctor having to wrestle with money management, you start to realize really quickly that there's a broad spread of intelligence types and not everyone is good at everything.

Which is why explaining the basic concepts in an authoritative way that is easy for anyone to understand has value!

I’ve met some very high verbal IQ people who are terrible at math and I’m extremely unconvinced it’s actually genetic or unchangeable. I think it’s usually that they displayed great verbal ability at a young age, didn’t care about math, then never really cared to learn because they could always coast on their writing/verbal ability. If they truly needed it they could probably quickly become competent with a few hours a day of high-intensity tutoring for a short period.

I think it’s usually that they displayed great verbal ability at a young age, didn’t care about math, then never really cared to learn because they could always coast on their writing/verbal ability.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

For real life math applications - probably less than a day. Learn to know exponential functions, positive and negative feedback, some statistics and probability theory - that's it. All of those take one or two hours to grok at basic level. And with them you will be able to build useful mental model of almost anything.

While I think some people are limited in some fashion, I also think basic math is just taught in a horrible fashion.

The contrast between my econ and finance courses and the math courses I was required to take were like night and day.

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